Lesson 2 | Imperfect Indicatives
[1] About Imperfect Indicatives
Last lesson, we learned about present indicative verbs. This lesson, we are learning about imperfect indicative verbs. There are 1,685 imperfect indicatives in the Greek NT. You will usually meet imperfect verbs in narrative books like the Gospels and Acts, or in the book of Revelation.
The present and imperfect tense-forms have a lot in common:
- Both have imperfective aspect
- Both use the present stem of a verb
- Neither use a tense former
The major difference between these two tense-forms is time.
Present indicatives usually communicate a non-past event. Imperfect indicatives usually communicate a past event. As a result, imperfect indicatives add an augment and use a different set of verb endings. You can see how these tense-forms relate to one another when we compare the active first person singular present and imperfect forms of λύω:
Present
λυ+ω
[Augment]
[Stem]
[Tense Former]
[Ending]
Imperfect
ε+λυ+ον
[Augment]
[Stem]
[Tense Former]
[Ending]
Both forms use the present stem (λυ), and neither has a tense-former. However, note that the imperfect form has an augment (ἔ) and a different ending. Next, we learn the four key features.